As more people gain access to the Internet, more information and functionality has been made available over the World Wide Web. For example, some computer program applications offering functionality for completing a specific task or range of tasks (e.g., word processing applications) that were once available only on personal computers or on terminals in a local area network are now available via the web. These web-based applications, also referred to herein as web applications, are growing in number and many offer functionality similar to that available by computer programs executing locally on personal computers.
A web application is hosted by one or more servers and accessible via the Internet. A user of a client computer who has a subscription to the web application (i.e., has access to the web application's functionality by paying, for example, a monthly fee) accesses the web application by connecting to a server hosting the web application with a web browser executing on the client computer. A web application manager may be used to manage the status of subscriber accounts and open new subscriber accounts, and by itself be a web application.
In use, a web browser connects to the server hosting a web application and downloads the web application's interface and data associated with the web application to the client computer. In some cases, some of the functionality of the web application may also be downloaded to the client computer for local execution to increase the speed of the application by allowing some processing to be done locally rather than remotely.
The user may then, using the web browser, enter information into the interface or manipulate information using the interface, at which point the information may be transmitted back to the server for processing. The server hosting the web application may then transmit the processed data back to the client computer for further use by the user, or may store the processed data in a computer-readable medium for subsequent access by the user via the web application.
Multiple web applications may be offered by a single vendor as a suite of web applications, such as the Office Live suite of web applications available from the Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. In these cases, multiple servers may be made accessible to users via the Internet, each server or group of servers hosting a specific web application. A user may select to access any of the web applications and connect to a server hosting that application.